Total Economic Value of Maasai Mau, Trans Mara and Eastern Mau ...

Water Resources Management Authority, Lake Victoria Basin Water Office, watercatchment area advisory committees, water resources user associations and water usersassociations. Furthermore, WWF (which has been instrumental in initiating variousinstitutional capacity development activities in the Mara River Basin) has facilitatedformation of the Mara River Water Users Association and the Mara catchmentcommittees in both Kenya and Tanzania. The report notes that despite acceleratedreforms in the water sector and in particular the existing institutions in both financialand skilled human manpower, ineffective enforcement of conservation laws, generallack of awareness on the importance of watershed among upstream stakeholders,inadequate consultative process to bring together key players among others still remainproblematic. All these problems cut across the national and transboundary waterresources such as the Mara River Basin. However, the transboundary managementstructures are also being developed specifically for the Mara River Basin by the LVBC toprovide a potential platform for watershed conservation groups and beneficiaries toestablish a legal framework for incentives schemes.Because many ecosystem payments will provide only supplemental income, it makessense to consider their role as a catalyst or enabling mechanism for adopting bettermanagement practices. Even a modest level of payment, reliably paid over many years,can provide the increment to net income that makes a sustainable forest enterpriseviable, justify the restoration of degraded forest, or increase resource-use efficiency.7.3 Others IncentivesThe environmental easementsThe water catchments areas of the three forest blocks are mostly protected areas. Theyensure that key features of the Mara River Basin including vegetation cover, inflowquality, sedimentation loading, riverine ecosystems and the ability of the basin toprovide quality water resources are sustained. These forests can be conserved throughuse of innovative incentives such as environmental easements. An easement is a legalright to control certain uses of a piece of land; a conservation easement gives the holderof the easement, usually a conservation organization or a government agency, the right67